


The Last of You

by cluelesstwilight



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Other, banana fish - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 08:11:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cluelesstwilight/pseuds/cluelesstwilight
Summary: Spoilers ahead!!!!!Think, I want you to think of warm summer days, a single season to spend with the one you love, and you only get one.Remember what it's like to love someone, but not have them there, because your worlds aren't meant to unite. In the secondyou let yourself think about all of this, imagine what the other person feels, as you lay your head down, one last time, the last of you,bleeding and dreaming on the words they left behind for you.This is dedicated to Banana Fish, and takes place from Eiji's point of view after Volume 19.





	The Last of You

**Author's Note:**

> I've been needing to write something for Banana Fish, and here it is. The Last of You. Believe it or not I wrote the first half while listening to George Michael's Last Christmas.....I know I know that is totally bizarre. Given that this is anything but cheery. But, either way thank you for taking the chance and reading this. It means an awful lot to me.

I saw you today, Ash.  
But you weren’t you, you weren’t even really there.  
You were gone. Max and Ibe-san said they saw something like this once, not too long ago. 

But they didn’t figure this could ever happen to you, none of us did. 

Your name appeared on the screen, a picture following with your cold eyes facing the world. No one knows how in an instant, they can melt into two crystal pools, emotions reflected within a watery jade, dazzling to my empty sky. The way you somehow brought your presence into the room without even really being there at all, it’s something I’ve gotten used to as of lately. With you gone often, you leave behind a slight madness within me, one that gnaws, dying butterflies circling my stomach. There’s no way to dull such a sharp ache, if it would materialize into a knife I could use to cut you from whatever was keeping you from returning, to just have you come home one more time. But you didn’t, and the news reporter makes sure to remind me twice in such a raspy voice, evident of an earlier smoke break, right before he delivered the news to a million people who didn’t know or care for you, Ash. How casual it must have been, to relay to me a message by then I had already knew, however as if the world wasn’t cruel enough, would just so happen to play when I came back. When I came back from seeing you.

You’re everywhere, in my prayers to medical tables, to the television we fussed over frequently. Who would want to watch nurses cry over themselves in a Christmas Hallmark flick, I can still hear you say, an echo through the lonely apartment. Teasing, you’d switch it onto Sesame Street and move expertly between the table of sushi and beers we had set up, right before I had the chance to hurl a pillow towards you. Who could predict, I’d be clutching the very same pillow at this moment, crying over you. Blinking through a teary vision, I can still see you there atop of the steely table, a window separating the two of us. I had all the doubt in the entire universe it could not be possibly true, a fraction of my mind set apart from the others joined in with my crackling heart, settling into a fierce grip, knowing deep down inside that the lynx had gone ,cold, in the snowy mountain. A place I can never reach you. It was another piece of my mind, holding my beating heart back from breaking, from jumping into a fight with a flood of a million emotions felt from a single being, inevitably in complete denial over the inevitable, you would tell me, Ash. Yet, i kept on believing, I kept on praying until they lifted the blanket, slowly, the flickering fluorescents shedding the truth bit by bit from your golden sunny hair, to blonde eyelashes, to your sharp jawline, revealing the dead body of a boy I dragged into a bathtub to wake his sleepy self up. There was absolutely no way he could ever wake from this, I heard from the whispering corners of my mind. 

All at once, it all came crashing, the reality breaking me down, a broken world where you somehow slipped through its foreboding cracks, seemingly unafraid. I was never like you, Ash. Never harboring any fear concerning the hooded reaper everyone else wants to avoid. You were concerned with the most trivial of things, the amount of mustard there was on our hot dogs to the number of times you called me gramps or Big Brother. 

Or how you came down from your annual milk chugging to suspiciously eye your shrimp and avocado salad, in a rising voice you spoke, “Some of it’s been eaten!” Trying my best and failing to succeed, I let out such a hearty laughter over the wrinkled newspaper, my tears soaking up the inky cartoon section. How you became easily flustered, nervous in a way I had only ever seen in a few short seconds some mornings we’d spend together. You then remember when I tried to wake you up earlier, and in a flash you down your food, embarrassed. These were the times when I knew we could have this sort of life together, with the sun knocking on our window, peering curiously through the dirty stained glass, surrounding us in a halo of warmth. We make light banter over the recent news, occasionally I’d have to dodge a shrimp or two, missing one with my mouth, prompting a smirk and snicker from the blonde across the table. In the corner by the couch, the fallen shrimp lays, almost forgotten. From behind me a meow beckons, and I am quick to startle, dropping the sports section into a pitcher of orange juice. Now it’s your turn to laugh, and my cheeks grow pink, burning. Picking up the shrimp and the rest of your food, you give it to the tabby that has found a home on our balcony. This gesture seems innocent enough, but it was that split second reminding us both why we couldn’t have cozy moments like this, at least with the door open. A bullet takes advantage of the opportunity and it zips through the air, in my direction, I was much quicker to dodge the shrimp before the bullet pushed me from the chair, and onto the floor stunned. Blood blooms and I assume it’s some sort of paint ball, my vision blurry. The orange juice shatters, glass glittering while a lynx runs under its seedy shower, sliding down at my side. Everything else went after that dark that. If only it had been the rowdy neighborhood kid playing painted tricks again.

Looking down, the orange juice left a stain on the carpet, my blood a faded red on the wooden floors. Whoever it was watching us that day, I knew was no longer around, because when I woke up in the hospital, you snuck in through the window, blood on your sweater, hands shaking. Weakly, I say it’s better to have my Ash jump through the window rather than a speeding bullet, and it’s my way of letting you know how I was okay. I got you to smile, I remember that, clearly. It was dark, and your smile compels me to squint, as it brightens the room, as it brightens my day. However, it flickers, and you’re brought to your knees, crying. It’s an apology, and although you fear no damned death, your beautiful courage falters over my own potential death, and it pains me once more, knowing there was no sure way I can protect you the way you do for me. No way to stop those tears from flowing, no way to rewind the tapes of your life and erase the corrupted melodies those bastards left behind. Helpless, I lay on the bed, my warm hand finding your cold one, breathless you lean into me, careful and precise. The heartbeat of the memory rushes, and I wish it can revive your own. Nostalgia cannot bring back what my broken heart has lost. 

I didn’t want you to leave, Ash. How can anyone know the risk you bear whenever you’re out on the street, sunglasses covering the diamond of your eyes. To us, the strangers from the shadowy streets of New York weren’t squarely society’s regulars, hurrying into work. Amongst all the foot traffic lurked the nightmares which haunted you in your sleep, the type of characters seen from those detective shows, except those were fictional and in your life they were very much real. At least they were until their bodies found their way to the ground, lifeless, your adamant nature hardened, flying straight into their skull. Trembling, your hands wield the biting metal of the gun, closing my eyes I recall the shape of your hands in mine, the crescent of guilt splattered onto them, invisible. You told me previously, about the blood you never saw, the blood of all those you killed, the blood of Shorter, could never come off with lavender and rose soap. How much of it was on you, and how I could look at you with those thoughts in my mind. How can anyone understand while you wandered out into the backyard of New York, these thoughts haunted you when you wide awake, keeping yourself together so you and I could be together. The ruthless instinct you carried when provoked by the enemy, cold blood powering the iron will of the gang leader that sought revenge on those who took to ruining his life and the lives of others, especially the ones you loved so dearly. Who could understand, how at every corner you held your breath, waiting for a snake to strike. Sure everyone in New York has to remain cautious, but not the way Ash was always aware, the way he was careful and quick with the trigger of his gun. All of these thoughts danced around my mind, keeping me awake next to you, because if I let myself fall asleep, it would mean losing you to those dangerous streets, leaving you alone with all that makes you cry at night, calling out for your mother. Either way, you slipped through the gaps of my fingers, into a reality where your armor was slowly cracking. 

Did we ever receive the chance to discuss our future? Of course we did, I recall your gentle voice and tired eyes clueing me in on your wish to join me in Japan. I would have taken you, Ash. I told you, not in the way I wanted to, but in a letter. A crisp letter Sing delivered to you on the steps of the New York public library, where I couldn’t stand the smell of mustard on my hot dog, as I sat next to you, enjoying your sunlight company. You were staying away, staying away so our worlds wouldn’t collide, your world where death and guns are the norm and mine is just another library checking out your chapter from afar. Putting the distance between us, you hoped to become a distant memory. I couldn’t stand the thought of your atmosphere dripping starry blood on some sidewalk in New York, I needed you here with me. A reality without you isn't’ practical, call me a lovely little fool, if that’s all I can be in your world for yearning for your return to my own. So I bought a plane ticket with the intention of bringing you back to me, letting you know that the hope you’re reaching for isn’t distingrating. I consider it such a blessing to have met you here, Ash, to have traveled to America never thinking of finding someone like you. You’re a blessing, but it isn’t fair that at the cost of your existence comes the threat of destruction. A destruction telling you we live in different worlds, and we can never be in the same one again.

 

No, I didn’t believe that. We have each other in all this madness, a love I will never regret. Wasn’t that enough? In spite of everything, I chose to be by you, only scared of losing you, and lost you I have. 

Sing came running back to tell me how much you couldn’t wait to see me again. I should’ve leapt, somehow, out of the wheelchair at that moment, to bring you home myself. To keep you from that medical table. Have you by side in a reality, and not a dream. No matter what happened, my soul will always be with yours.

Those last few minutes you read my letter, what were you thinking? One thing I haven’t mentioned, was the smile the paramedics had seen, on their way over to the hospital. There was my Ash, bleeding, dreaming. A smile I had seen in the morning light, over the pile of books in a library, one I know your ghost wears now, relieved. 

 

Are you in a cape cod sort of peace now? Hanging from the trees with Shorter, gazing upon me with those soulful eyes of an angel? I feel my own dry, and reach for my glasses beside me on the desk, almost feeling my hand brush past a ghostly one. I was washed away by your river eyes, your sing song laugh, the special season we spend in memory. The summer we were playful boys for the first and last time. 

Wait for me Ash, I’ll see you again, some summer day soon.

**Author's Note:**

> This won't be the last Banana Fish fic I'll write, I'm working on an AU currently, loaded with feels. I guess this is my own way of coping with the feels the anime and manga have given me. I would really appreciate feedback in the comments, this was written in 2 days and I really do need some pointers on drafts and whatnot. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and stick around, there'll be more.
> 
> -Jae
> 
> p.s.  
> I'm on tumblr as bleedingtwilight, changed my user, but I'll be getting into drabbles there if you're interested.


End file.
